


gemstone and steel

by braigwen_s



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Aunt-Niece Relationship, Backstory, Beifong Family Feels, Bonding, Domestic Fluff, Family Dynamics, Gen, Lin's Love Language Is Vulnerability, Look At Them They're Just Perfect, Me? Projecting My Desire To Find A Good Maternal Figure? It's More Likely Thank You Think, Opal's Love Language Is Looking After People, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 16:43:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18642043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braigwen_s/pseuds/braigwen_s
Summary: A dam wall and a slow leak.  A cliff and wind eroding it.  A suit of armor and a glider suit.  A bitter old woman remembering how to trust, and a sweet young woman learning that family isn't always what it seems like.  Lin Beifong and her niece, Opal.Series and Turf Wars-compliant.





	1. old wounds revisted

It had been a comfortable evening in the little apartment Opal shared with Bolin – he was away, studying the history of lavabending with Korra somewhere in the Fire Nation, but Aunt Lin had dropped by ‘for a few minutes’. That ‘few minutes,’ as per usual, had meant until dinner, then dinner, and she would probably end up asleep in an armchair till Opal dragged her to the couch.

“Hey, Aunt Lin,” said Opal suddenly, folding her book shut when she looked up from her own reading (police paperwork, as usual), “could I ask you something?”

She made a relaxed gesture as she raised her eyebrows, similar to the beckon that meant ‘bring-it-on’ in sparring. “Sure, but don’t expect an answer.”

“How did you get your scars?”

Aunt Lin had many scars, white and pink and terracotta streaks scattered across her arms and feet and neck, so Opal, by not specifying, had intended to give her an out. This didn’t seem to occur to her, though. The colour drained from her face, and one hand rushed to cover her marred cheek.

Opal instantly felt terrible.

She tore the hand away, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. A lock of silver hair fell back down in its place. She opened her eyes, but didn’t look at Opal.

“You don’t have to tell me,” she started, and Aunt Lin grimaced. She looked back down at the paperwork for a few moments, before huffing and shoving it aside. It scattered and slid to the floor.

Opal bit her lip… she’d never meant to upset her.

“Look, kid, it’s… complicated,” she said, sounding like it was with difficulty, “and I don’t want to ruin your relationship with your mother.”

Her relationship with her mother.

Whatever Opal had expected, it wasn’t that. Her nausea transformed from her own guilt to horrified unknowing. She wasn’t sure she wanted it to turn to knowing. “With my mother…” she breathed, and Lin bowed her head, half sorrow and half once again concealing her cheek.

Opal wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but she was sure that bottling things up didn’t help. Now that she had brought this up, it would be cruel to just drop it. “What did she do?”

“How much did she tell you abut her childhood in the City?”

“Not that much? I know she started dancing there, and that she got tangled in some shady stuff…”

“Some shady stuff?” she snorted, and then sighed. She was still pale, but at least possessed of her usual acerbity. “Nothing more specific?”

Opal wracked her brains. “She was hanging out with some street kids, I think they might have been in a Triad? She said you – I mean, I know I can’t trust that, but she said you told her she was ruining her life, so it was probably… more serious than just ‘hanging out’.”

She knew Aunt caught her implication of sex. “Oh, so _that_ line of mine she tells you.” Her hand went to her cheek again, but Opal didn’t think it was conscious.

“It _was_ a Triad,” she said eventually, and Opal had the distinct impression she’d been waiting to tell somebody this for decades, because it was suddenly rushing out like a swift-tide, “the Terra Triad, to be precise. And it _was_ a lot more serious than ‘hanging out,’ because she was ... she was a member. I was trying to get her out, but she wouldn’t accept my help… one day I was on duty and got a report of a robbery, and I was first at the scene. I stopped their Satomobile, and the passengers scattered, but the driver was … well, I suppose you can figure who.”

Opal nodded, teary. “Mom.”

“I – I told her not to walk away, and she did anyway, and it escalated and –“

Opal wasn’t sure how her hands covered her gasp, because she wasn’t sure how she was breathing.

“I grabbed her wrist with my cable, and she … cut the cable. And it snapped back. She didn’t mean for it to hurt me, but …”

“It did anyway,” finished Opal in a whisper. “Oh, Aunt Lin. I can’t imagine how awful that would have been.”

She gave a kind of shaky shrug. “Junior nearly killed you. I’d reckon that should count.”

Nearly killed – judging from where the scars were on her jawline, one inch lower and the cables might have slit her jugular vein. One inch lower and she might not have had an aunt to meet. And one inch higher and she might be blind like Grandma, but that didn’t come into it. Her mother had nearly killed a sibling too. “I’ve got brothers to spare. You only had one sister.”

Opal wasn’t sure if the noise Aunt Lin let out was a snort or a sob. She made the short distance to her chair and squeezed her hand. Her shoulders were shaking – they were definitely sobs now – and Opal reached up and clasped the nearer. “I love you, Auntie,” she said.

That, at least, she knew. She loved her aunt, she truly did. She’d deal with her feelings about her mother later. She’d be living in Republic City with Bolin for the foreseeable future anyway.

Aunt Lin’s fingers found her own, and her crying began to ease. “I love you too.”

Opal, very slowly and gently, moved so that she was facing her, and untangled one hand. She then reached up and touched her cheek. She didn’t know what she had anticipated – the scar tissue just felt like normal scar tissue – but, then, she didn’t know a lot of things. Aunt Lin stiffened, but then relaxed. Once again, she laid her hand over Opal’s.

She cleared her throat, sniffling. “I _do_ have reports to finish reading, you know.”

Wordlessly, Opal crouched down to pick them up.


	2. next of kin

Lin has lived her whole life in the force - even her childhood drawings are in her record - she has less of a personnel file and more a personnel filing cabinet.  She found the "personal details" folder and took it back to her office, stretching her back and sighing.  She began to thumb through at her desk, flat papers, and scrolls, from before the Force (before _she_ ) standardized documentation, fluttering piecemeal to the floor.   She found the form she was looking for, and smoothed it flat on the desk surface, mindful of the old paper.

_In The Case Of An Emergency_. 

She knew all the lines by heart.  The disclaimers about risk.  If the officer has dietary restrictions, if the officer has allergies.  The officer's preferred hospital.  The officer's preferred care and ritual post-death.  People to contact.

On her file, the next of kin had been crossed out two times.  Just then, it was blank, as it had been for thirty years.  _Toph Beifong_ , said the first entry, in a sixteen-year-old's best handwriting, shaking with care and pride.  It had been ruled through in a twenty-year-old's bold stroke, thick with anguished decisiveness.  _Tenzin, son of Aang_ said the replacement, underlined for further emphasis. The crossing-out of that was smudged, like it had been cried on before it dried - as it had, of course.  She considered, just sitting there, for little shy of a minute. Then she pulled a pen from the top drawer and, before she could regret it, wrote

 _Opal Beifong_.

The section below read _Relation To Officer_.  _Mother_ had been crossed out, and _Spouse_ right beside it, desecrated in style matching their names.  She crossed them both out again, and went back up to the name and doubled the lines through Mom and Tenzin's entries there, too.  Just so that it felt more like a genuine placement of trust, and less like an idiot putting all her hope in somebody again.  

 _Relation To Officer:  Niece_. 


End file.
